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<title>Welcome to the The Anglo-Saxon Penitentials: A cultural database</title>
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		<h2 style="margin-right: 1.5em;">Introduction to The Anglo-Saxon
		Penitentials</h2>
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				<td align="center" style="padding-top: 4em;"><img
					style="border: double 3px #626C9B;" src="pics/190404f.jpg"
					alt="Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 190, p. 404.">
				<p><img style="border: double 3px #626C9B;"
					src="pics/190404g.jpg"
					alt="Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 190, p. 404.">
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						<td align="left"><font face="arial" color="green" size="+3">G</font>
						<font face="arial" size="+1"> ýf hwýlc bisceop man ofslea ·
						þolige his hades · &amp; fæste · <br />
						&nbsp; &nbsp; xii · gear · þa · vii · on hláfe & on þa · v · þrý
						dagas<br />
						&nbsp; &nbsp; on wucan · & þa oþre bruce his metes ·
						<hr noshade="noshade">

						If any bishop slays someone, he is to forfeit his orders and fast
						12 years, 7 on bread and water, and for 5 years 3 days each week,
						and on the others partake of his food.</font>
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						<center><font face="arial" size="2"> Cambridge,
						Corpus Christi College, MS 190, p. 404.<br/>
						With permission of the Parker Library, Cambridge University. </font></center>
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				<p><center><b>PENITENTIALS</b></center>are lists of sins and the penances
				prescribed for them. These texts governed the practice of private
				confession and penance in the early Middle Ages. This database contains all the vernacular penitentials
				that survive from Anglo-Saxon England, a period extending from the
				seventh to the eleventh century. These texts have never before been
				edited and translated as a corpus. (See the <a href="index.html#tech">note</a> below on Firefox,
				the browser you need to use the database.)</p>

		<p><center><b>ELEMENTS</b> of the database</b></center><b>USER'S GUIDE</b>: what's here, how it works. <br/><b>TEXTS</b>: a
		description of each handbook and the manuscripts that
		contain it. <br/><b>TRANSLATIONS</b>: a Modern English version of
		each text. <br/><b>MANUSCRIPTS</b>: the handbooks as they are found in each manuscript, with a description of each manuscript and a list of its penitential content. <br/> <b>CULTURAL INDEX</b>: penances categorized by topic, e.g., animals, emotions, sex, theft, and others. <br/><b>BACKGROUND</b>: the history of
		penance, including an unpublished essay, <a href="1990PREF.pdf">"The 'Literariness' of the Penitentials."</a><br/><b>BIBLIOGRAPHY</b>: editions and sources. </p>


				<p><center><b>THE DATABASE AS A MEDIUM</b></center>At left and above is an Anglo-Saxon
				penitential found in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 190. The
				red "h" marks the beginning of a new chapter of the <b>Old English Penitential</b>. To demonstrate the style of the database, a section of this
				material has been highlighted and reproduced twice, first
				in the transcription style used throughout the database and then in translation.</p>
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<p align="left"><font face="arial" size="+1">Each paragraph in this neatly-rubricated
				manuscript begins with a colored initial (dark spots
				on the page are colored initials from the opposite side showing
				through). This section concerns homicide committed by the clergy,
				starting with the bishop and moving down through the lower
				ecclesiastical grades. The penance varies with the severity of the offense, measured in part by the status of
				the sinner. (This is why these texts are sometimes called "tariff" penitentials.)
				A bishop who kills someone is defrocked and must fast for 12 years.
				Priests, monks, and deacons guilty of the same sin have to perform
				lesser penances. All three grades have to give up their ecclesiastical
				status. The priest or monk is to do penance for 10 years, while the
				deacon is to do penance for 7 years. In all cases the penance translates into fasting at the appropriate
				times.</p>
<center>				
<font face="arial" size="+1"> &middot; <a href="index.html#texts">Guide to the
		Old English texts</a> &middot; <a href="index.html#form">The
		penitential as a form</a> &middot; <a href="index.html#tech">Technical
		notes</a>
		<p><b>The Texts</b></p>
</center>		

		<p align="left"><a name="texts"><b>Each Old English handbook of penance
		is found today in three or more manuscript copies.</b></a> In this database
		you will find an <b>edition</b> of every version found in every
		manuscript and a <b>translation</b> of the longest or most complete
		form of each text. Using the menus at the left, you can view the texts
		in various ways. For example, you can view a single canon alone, or
		with its translation. You can also view all versions of the sentence
		in Old English and move instantly from one version to another.</p>

		<p align="left"><b>All five of the Anglo-Saxon handbooks are found in
		eleventh-century manuscripts.</b> These manuscripts are, in almost every
		case, copies of earlier manuscripts that have since disappeared (we
		know this because two copies of any given text often share certain
		features, including errors, that show they descended from a common
		archetype). The texts (and the abbreviated titles) are
		<dir>
			the <i>Old English Introduction (OEI)</i>;<br/>
			the <i>Scriftboc (SBC)</i>;<br/>
			the <i>Canons of Theodore (CTH)</i>;<br/>
			the <i>Old English Penitential (OEP)</i>;<br/>
			the <i>Old English Handbook (OEH)</i>.</dir>
		<p align="left">For details on each of these documents, go to the Texts menu to
		the left. The source relationships of the penitentials tell us
		something about the probable development of the texts. The SBC and CTH
		share the same sources, mainly eighth- and ninth-century Latin texts.
		The OEP translates an early ninth-century Frankish text and also
		borrows several canons from the SBC, while many parts of the OEH are
		taken from the OEP.</p>
		<p>
		<center><a name="form"><b>Form & Function</b></a><br/>
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		<p align="left"><b>What is a penitential?</b> Handbooks of penance, or
		penitentials, are catalogues listing sins and the penances assigned to
		each by the priest in confession. Penitentials usually have two parts:
		1) an introduction instructing the priest in how to receive the
		penitent, sometimes called the <i>ordo confessionis</i>; and 2) a list
		of sins with graded penances for them (usually called the "tariff
		penitential"). In the Old English corpus, only the <i>Canons of
		Theodore</i> lacks an introduction addressed to the priest (although it
		does contain a preface). In manuscript form, penitentials survive more
		often as parts of larger manuscript codices rather than as the small,
		self-contained handbooks presumably common in the Middle Ages. A few
		such handbook-sized ` do, however, exist; MS Y, Laud Misc. 482, is one
		of them. Although penance was not a sacrament in Anglo-Saxon England,
		there was, as these texts suggest, a well-developed penitential
		theology during the period.</p>
		<p align="left"><b>The introduction</b> tells the priest how to administer
		confession, interrogate penitents, determine their spiritual
		disposition and sincerity in repenting, and weigh the seriousness of
		their sins. The priest sometimes asks them about their faith and
		understanding of basic beliefs. In continental penitentials of the
		ninth century and later, this function was fulfilled by the <i>ordo
		confessionis</i>; the <i>Old English Introduction</i> is an adaptation of
		that function.</p>
		<p align="left"><b>The body of the penitential</b> contains the "tariffs" or
		lists of sins and penances. In earlier Irish penitentials the lists of
		sins followed the sequence of the eight (or seven) "deadly sins" (<i>capitalia
		crimina</i>), but most penitentials, including the Anglo-Saxon documents,
		are organized into more detailed sections. Some sections concern
		"deadly sins," including murder, theft, and a variety of sexual
		offenses; others are somewhat haphazard collections of regulations
		concerning food.</p>
		<p align="left">The tariffs were graduated in severity and complexity. For
		example, parents who allowed their child to die without Baptism were
		to do penance for ten years; although one who killed his or her child
		before the child was baptized was also assigned penance for ten years,
		a penance of seven years was sometimes possible. On the other hand, a
		mother who murdered her child was to do penance for fifteen years; if
		she was needy, the penance was seven years instead. These examples
		indicate some of the value of penitential handbooks in the study of
		medieval society, demonstrating the severity of penance, the greater
		worth of a baptized as opposed to unbaptized child, and the role of
		circumstances (in this case, poverty) in moderating penance.</p>
		<p align="left"><b>Important variations distinguish one penitential from
		another.</b> Language is one variable, since the scribes differed in the
		dialect and idiom they knew best. The documents vary in other details,
		even in the matter of measuring penance in nights or days. Such
		details, particular to each manuscript, register the religious and
		moral standards of major church centers (Exeter, Worcester,
		Winchester, and others). Differences in form are equally important as
		registers of medieval ideas of the book and its "searchability." Each
		scribe followed a unique page layout and chapter numbering system that
		would enable others to reference a large collection quickly. These
		patterns demonstrate the logic used to organize groups of
		interconnected administrative texts and adapt religious content to
		bureaucratic form.</p>
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		<p align="center"><a name="tech"> <b>Note to Version 2.0 (June 2010)</b></a></p>
		<p align="left">The database runs in <a
			href="http://www.firefoxuserguide.com/co/firefoxuserguide/?sid=">Firefox</a>. Other browsers (e.g., Internet Explorer or Netscape) will not handle all the features of the program. </p>
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